“If you could ask Margaret Atwood, Khaled Hosseini, or James Patterson anything, what would it be? Maybe you want to know their writing inspiration, what they read as a guilty pleasure, or you have a burning question about one of their bestsellers. Now’s your chance because these three are among the 54 major authors who are helping us launch an exciting new program on Goodreads—Ask the Author! Ask the Author allows readers to ask questions and get answers from their favorite authors. At Goodreads, we believe the relationship between authors and readers is very special. Authors tell stories and create worlds that spark the imaginations of their readers. Now readers can deepen that connection by asking questions about the new worlds, ideas, and people they’ve discovered in books.” (via Goodreads)

“Online fiction is a remote world, peopled by elves, dragons and whey-faced vampires. At least that is the view shared by millions of devoted readers of the printed novel. But now serious British literary talent is aiming to colonise territory occupied until now by fantasy authors and amateur fan-fiction writers.”

“Are you tired of searching for yourself in Google Scholar, Scopus, or Academic Search Complete and finding other people who share your family name? This is a serious problem for researchers, whose reputations rest on their publication history. Many researchers are working on ways to separate the agronomist Dr. Jones from the medical Dr. Jones from the archeologist Dr. Jones. ORCID, a registry that will assign a unique ID to each author, is now live. But assigning a unique ID isn’t going to help unless EVERYONE uses that ID. Up until now, different companies and products have assigned ID numbers to their authors, but nobody else uses those numbers. That’s how authors have ended up with a Scopus ID, a ResearcherID, and a different institutional ID.”

“Larry McMurtry, the famed author of “Lonesome Dove” and dozens of other books, was walking slowly along State Highway 79 on Friday morning toward this town’s only intersection. Down the block, more than 150 collectors and dealers were queuing up to bid on 300,000 used books — about two-thirds of the stock of Booked Up, the four-building literary mecca that Mr. McMurtry started here in 1988.”

“The 62-year-old said Interventions, a collection of four volumes, is a “tribute to the printed book” and would not be made available online. The author, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 with Empire Falls, said he wanted to encourage people to buy from local bookstores. “Readers can’t survive on e-books alone,” he told the Associated Press. “The rapid rise of e-books and online sales of printed books pose threats to bookstores, the book publishing industry and the rise of new authors,” he continued.”